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PDF versionA Moral Case for Health Care Reform
Aug. 24, 2009
If you watch enough cable news you would think the fight over health care reform has been reduced to protestors screaming about socialism, "death panels" and the evils of government. A new campaign, organized by Christian, Jewish and Muslim organizations united behind health care reform as a moral imperative, offers a stark contrast to the anger and misinformation distorting this critical debate.
Our coalition, 40 Days for Health Reform, hosted a national conference call with President Obama last week that featured religious leaders and engaged citizens sharing painful stories from the front lines of a broken health care system. One hundred and forty thousand citizens participated. Instead of shouting and demagoguery, there was thoughtful reflection, civil dialogue and factual analysis. Ministers and rabbis spoke about values that transcend partisan politics or narrow ideologies.
A Muslim-American neurologist expressed frustration with insurance companies denying coverage to those in desperate need of treatment. A 15-year-old Catholic with scoliosis talked about how her family is going without medical care because they lost Medicaid coverage. A Christian minister spoke of a parishioner without insurance whose cancer remained undiagnosed until it was too late.
These powerful testimonies remind us that health care reform is not an abstract issue. Each day in our congregations and communities we see needless suffering because quality health care is not available to all. This is a grave injustice. The faith community refuses to concede the debate to talk-radio pundits, Washington insiders or special interests defending the status quo.
We will not be satisfied until all Americans have access to quality and affordable health care. 40 Days for Health Reform includes more than 30 denominations and religious organizations that represent Americans across race, region and political affiliation. The campaign includes a national TV ad on CNN, prayer vigils, sermon weekends and visits with key members of Congress. This next month will be critical as Congress tackles several reform proposals. Each day 14 thousand Americans lose their health insurance and working families struggle to pay medical bills. Comprehensive reform can't wait any longer. As Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. once preached, we believe in the "fierce urgency of now."
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At the heart of complicated legislative battles over health care are profound moral and ethical questions. Even if we are satisfied with our own health care, what responsibility do we have as a society to make sure the system works for everyone? How do we balance individual interests with policies that best serve the common good? While specific solutions to a 21st century health-care crisis can't be found in the Bible, Koran or the Torah, our faith traditions offer timeless values about human dignity, compassion and loving our neighbors as ourselves. People of goodwill can disagree over the most effective ways to ensure reform. But we must not waver from this core principle: health care is a human right, not a privilege.
The faith community also has an important responsibility to correct those bearing false witness in this debate. Fears that seniors will be denied end-of-life care or doctors will be forced to perform abortions against their ethical principles are gross distortions perpetuated by ideologues more interested in handing the Obama administration a political defeat than ensuring all Americans have quality health care.
There are longstanding polices that prohibit federal taxpayer funding of abortions and sensible conscience protections for health care providers. Retaining these policies is critical to achieving the broad consensus necessary for health care reform. In contrast to outrageous claims about "death panels", a provision in the House legislation would allow Medicare to pay doctors for voluntary counseling sessions with patients that include discussions about living wills and hospice care. The Catholic Health Association has stated the provision would not encourage euthanasia, and a diverse range of groups including The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, the American Medical Association and the AARP support it.
Faith-based movements have always inspired our nation to live up to its highest ideals. We know that justice and change never come easily. Again, people of faith are on the march, united in the belief that hope is more powerful than fear.
John Gehring is Deputy Communications Director and Senior Writer for Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.
Amen to that!
Amen to that!
In my experiences, in places
In my experiences, in places where abortions occur, some type of state level public funding through either Medicaid or a medical charities fund shows up. What is more chilling is the fact that abortions covered under private insurance are already subsidized by taxpayers, since most private insurance is either deductible on Corporate or personal income taxes or funded with "pre-tax" dollars by premium payers. In other words, if you pay taxes or buy goods, every abortion performed has money you have provided. However, according to Catholic ethics texts, the participation is so remote as to relieve the taxpayer of responsibility. The subsidy suggested in Health Care Reform is neither different in impact or kind - so this should not be an issue. The fact that it remains an issue has more to do with Catholic Tribalism than anything else.
If you want to stop abortion, then stop abortion - preferably by making sure that people can afford to get married and have kids, no matter what age they are - without ruining their lives. This takes more funding of education, a living wage and, yes, health care reform.
The faith based coalition is
The faith based coalition is great news, and will undoubtedly be a big help in this important battle against ignorance and greed. I want to mention my own family's healthcare situation, and then address a huge obstacle to overcoming what John Gehring refers to as "those bearing false witness".
My wife and I have government provided medical insurance (Medicare). The Texas-based insurance company I retired from continues my free employee health insurance as secondary payor to Medicare, and because I am also retired from the military, my wife has secondary insurance from a government program called Tricare for Life. In addition, I am authorized care from the VA, which is what I actually use. We have five children, all of whom are gainfully employed. Four of them have medical insurance provided by their employers. Our youngest daughter, however, had to have a heart valve replaced several years ago. No private insurer will insure her. She was able to obtain what can only be described as "wholly inadequate" partial coverage under the Texas Health Pool. It entails a large deductible, large co-pays, and, under Texas law, the premium she pays is TWO TIMES that a private insurer could charge for a policy providing similar coverage. Not only that, but something you don't hear about is the employment discrimination she (and others like her) faces. No employer who provides medical insurance to its employees will hire her, even though her job qualifications and experience in her field are superior.
Mr. Gehring mentioned cable news. I'm sure he and the readers are also well aware of all the rightwing political pundits with their daily talkshows on AM radio where they are perpetuating, if not originating, the falsehoods. The obstacle to truth I want to alert you to, however, is called the "American Family Radio (AFR)", that broadcasts on FM. In this area, I hear them on 89.9FM (Bryan/College Station) and 88.3FM (Houston area). They say they have over 300 such stations nationwide, and appear to have a monopoly on the use of 88.3FM. I only listen for short periods at a time (when I'm in my vehicle), but I listen at different times throughout the day and night. Apparently they broadcast 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is supposedly a "Christian Radio" network, and sometimes there is a preacher or other religiously oriented program, but mostly what I hear is political talkshows, of the extreme rightwing persuasion, and their principal subject presently is castigation of the proposed overhaul of healthcare insurance. What they say is probably no worse or more untrue than the pundits on AM or Fox News; the problem is that by their very nature of "religious" orientation, I suspect that their regular listeners are totally convinced of their honesty and integrity, even though the bulk of their time is spent denigrating the honesty and integrity of the nation's leaders. I don't know how to combat this situation; I only know that they are poisoning the minds of at least thousands, maybe even millions of Americans. I hope this Coalition of Faith will look into this and find some means of fighting back.
As a senior I'm worried when
As a senior I'm worried when I learned that about 40% of the funding for the health care reform proposals will come from the Medicare program. When Medicare reimbursement rates for physicians are cut, they will start refusing to see Medicare patients. Also, missing from the proposals is any kind of tort reform. Malpractice insurance keeps the cost of care high.
Seniors who have contributed to Medicare for so long will now see it greatly damaged.
The danger of the Health Care
The danger of the Health Care Bill is that it is enabling legislation. While it may not implicitly say anything about abortion or end-of life care, it empowers non-elected officials to make these decisions in the future. Given the Obama Administration desire to fund abortion, we face the danger of tax-payer funded abortion in the future as well as death panels. Catholics are free to determine whether health care be ran by the government or by private concerns. It is moral to provide for those who do not have health care but it is not immoral to think that government should have a limited role in this area. John Gelring should be more interested in determining what is morally right than trying to follow Obama like a lemming.
Find a new topic. There are
Find a new topic. There are people dying of cancer and other serious diseases every day in the United States because they have no insurance and can't get treatment. For once, let's look at the people who are on this earth and give them as much value as some potential, possible, might be, of the future. Have you read the more than a thousand page bill, or do you just take the word of the insurance company inspired GOP legislators who take funding from them? My guess would be the latter.
There is certain intellectual
There is certain intellectual presumptuousness with the political left. They often forget that the policies that they advocate implementing requires accumulating unfathomable amounts of detailed information regarding the current and potential needs, wants and desires of millions of people who are literally making tens of millions of individual decisions on a daily basis. Thomas Sowell observed the following:
"In their haste to be wiser and nobler than others, (liberals) have misconceived two basic issues. They seem to assume (1) that they have more knowledge than the average member of (society) and (2) that this is the relevant comparison. The real comparison, however, is not between the knowledge possessed by the average member of the educated elite versus the average member of the general public, but rather the total direct knowledge brought to bear though social processes (the competition of the marketplace, social sorting, etc.), involving millions of people, versus the secondhand knowledge of generalities possessed by a smaller elite (liberal) group." (a)
It is impossible for a small group of government central planners to be able to effectively forecast and properly understand the myriad of informational cross currents involving technology trends, capital flows, cultural factors, regulatory behavioral outcomes and individual personal initiatives; hence, their policies are typically broad based, misdirected and lack innovation. This is why time and again those economic sectors that are dominated by government control are shown to be less efficient than those economic sectors where most decisions are directly made by individuals. Government policy makers, no matter how well intentioned, simply are not capable of effectively micromanaging the countless number of decisions that are necessary to run the daily lives of millions of citizens. This is not abstract economic theorizing, rather it is common sense.
FOOTNOTE:
(a) Thomas Sowell, Vision of the Anointed (Basic Books, New York, 1995) p.114
(b) Mr. Gehring writes that, “Each day 14 million Americans lose their health insurance.” I assume that this is a typographical error or unintended mis-statement. If there are about 250 million Americans currently with insurance then at rate of 14 million Americans a day losing their insurance, no Americans will be left with insurance after 18 days. (250 divided by 14 equals 18). I write this on August 25, 2009: by September 13, 2009 no one has any health insurance?
sir, When you go to the
sir,
When you go to the trouble of putting quotes around someone's statement and then taking a paragraph to criticize it - try reading it first. On my screen, it says "14 thousand".
Your faith in the free market system to provide a service that has been so badly mismanaged to date indicates a certain amount of presumptuousness itself.
Dennisn, If the original NCR
Dennisn,
If the original NCR article stated 14 thousand, then I misread it and I thank you for pointing out my error. I then stand corrected and extend my apologies to Mr.Gehring.
However, I disagree with your statement about my “presumptuousness” with regard to advocating the superior abilities of the competitive marketplace to make economic decisions relative to government central planners. The health care “crisis” was not created because the free market has “badly mismanaged” this economic sector; the problem is that government policies have interfered with marketplace pricing and supply mechanisms which has resulted in resource misallocation, unnecessary costs and reduced innovation. A few examples are as follows:
1) Tax Policy
Government tax policy subsidizes health insurance purchases based on how the insurance is bought. Employer provided group policies are paid in pre-tax dollars, but individual consumers receive no such benefit. This tax policy, partially a vestige from World War II wage and price controls, distorts the market’s ability to properly price insurance premiums, decreases insurance policy innovations and reduces choice. It impedes labor mobility by creating an environment where workers are locked into existing jobs due to insurance coverage concerns and are less likely to move to new emerging markets, thus hindering job creation and overall economic vitality.
2) Inefficiency of government run plans:
Government run insurance programs are spectacularly inefficient and wasteful. Columnist David Broder writes, “Medicare is going broke…(and) is the main engine for subsidizing the most wasteful, inefficient system of health care payments in any advanced industrial country. It rewards… on the basis of volume of procedures, not on the outcomes for patients…” (a) To even make matters worse Federal Government accounting practices drastically under-report Medicare costs. According the Professor Regina Herzlinger of Harvard University, “If Medicare followed private sector accounting, its yearly expenses would increase by $1 trillion…” (b) Someone must pay for this under-reported cost whether it is directly allocated to specific sets of taxpayers or surreptitiously covered by general tax revenues (or additional government borrowing).
3) Cost shifting from public insurance plans to private plans.
Medicaid and Medicare only cover 65% to 85% of the actual costs of care which forces medical providers to transfer this expense burden to the private sector. This pricing distortion requires private insurance carriers to bid up the cost of their premiums. Hence, the costs associated with government created inefficiency discussed above in item #2 are then forced upon private companies and this puts the price of insurance out of reach for some Americans.
4) Government enforced State cartels
Consumers cannot purchase out of state insurance plans. These government run oligopolistic environments limit competition and, by some estimates, increase insurance premiums by as much as 20%. The American Enterprise institutes estimates that over 12 million Americans could afford insurance if they were allowed to shop in states that had more affordable prices. (c)
5) Lawyers
Meanwhile the entire system is under assault by lawyers. Regarding this problem, Rich Karlgaard writes, “The biggest cost is not malpractice awards, which annually drive up U.S. health care costs by 1% to 2%...Most costly is the individual doctor’s perceived threat of a career ending malpractice award and his or her incentive, therefore, to practice defensive medicine because… fearing a lawsuit (the doctor) orders a battery of costly diagnostic test to rule out the highly improbable, even when the obvious cause of sickness or injury is staring him in the face…The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons puts the cost of defensive medicine at $100 billion to $178 billion per year.”
Massive government waste, cost shifting to the private sector, disruption of accurate pricing, illogical tax policies, ineffective government run cartels and lawyers run amuck – this is the health insurance system that U.S. Federal government has created. There is a role for active government participation in delivering health care to Americans, but layering more government bureaucracy on top of the existing byzantine conglomeration of government regulations is not the answer.
Footnotes
a)David Broder, “Obama needs to tell some harder truths on health care”, The Washington Post, 9/11/09
b)Regina Herzlinger, “Diagnosis”, The National Review, 5/25/09. Professor Herzlinger is the author of “Who Killed Health Care?”, New York, McGraw Hill, 2007
c)Ibid
d)Rich Karlgaard, “Our Health Care Crisis: Age, Obesity, Lawyers”, Forbes, 9/7/09
It's also breathtakingly
It's also breathtakingly arrogant to go from the premise that we need "health care reform" to the conclusion that THIS CURRENT BILL is indeed "what we need" and that it's a moral requirement for Catholics to support it 'sight unseen'.
I wonder, would slapping the title "reform" on ANY bill make it true reform?
What if some far-right-wing Congressman proposes some 'reform' of the reform? Would it automatically make it an improvement?
Adults learn to look past words, promises, and rhetoric to the details, the fine print, the contractual commitments, as well as past results.... and so, given all we know about every OTHER massive social program run by the government - all of which was promised in the rhetoric to be completely paid for and wonderful, only to later be revealed as insolvent and collapsing.... what makes us believe this will be different?
We just take on faith that Democrats never make mistakes? That liberals never fail the poor or minorities or 'women'? That liberal Democrats would never abuse their power? In light of New Jersey politics, Detroit, MI politics, and a dozen other Democrat Mayors, Congressmen and Senators - to say nothing of half a dozen Administration officials with 'tax issues', what makes us so sure these are people we can trust?
It would seem then that this bill is a 'faith based initiative'!
First, the opinion of those
First, the opinion of those who are against any reform should be dismissed. The 14,000 losing insurance quote is valid according to politifact.com. Meanwhile, the 10 largest health insurance companies achieved profits of 428% (60% + per year) from 2000 to 2007.
Second, once we agree that reform is necessary, why can't we take the best ideas from all interested and informed parties and make them work? For instance, tort reform and insurance companies competing nationally are both great ideas. But a public option is still needed so that lack of competition at the state level does not simply turn into a national problem.
I am not entirely thrilled about the government's ability to be efficient with a public option either. Medicare is inneficient but part of what is necessary is to make it more efficient. And frankly, I trust health insurance corporations (greed) less than the government (inneficient).
Subsidiarity has also been mentioned as a component of Catholic Social teaching and is used to argue that those that lack insurance should be more ambitious. I just completed the Just Faith program which has Catholic Social Teaching as it's foundation. Subsidiarity is taken entirely out of context in the healthcare debate. What about common good, solidarity and human dignity?
It doesn't surprise me that many Catholics today do not consider the Church's teachings on social justice as it pertains to todays social ills. The USCCB openly promote social justice but the local diocese, parish and priests rarely discuss it.
I would be more open to the
I would be more open to the Universal Health Care idea if doctors were more educated about food and healing. I run a community center and ask people all of the time that have illness what their doctors tell them about healing and nutrition. 99% of the time, including diabetes, there is no conversation happening from the doctors to the patients about what the patient eats. All doctors should have to be well versed in nutrition. Until that is changed along with vitamin support I believe it will just be a boondoggle for the pharmaceutical companies who want us to believe that pills will solve our ills. It is not true. We are what we eat and most illness that the American public have that are chronic come from poor nutrition. Fast food and food convince has been the down fall for Americans. Unless we address food as healing we are doomed to be pill popping society.
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